Editor’s Note: The following excerpt is from an article originally published by the Observatory of University Ethics on September 9, 2025. The Observatory translated it into English from French. I have edited it, to the best of my ability, to align with Minding the Campus’s style guidelines. It is crossposted here with permission.
In the joy of the happiness of being happy.
I received the equivalent of a big promotion a few days ago: I was canceled! Canceled, if you prefer. I felt the same emotion as when I started CM1: I was finally going to be able to play in the big leagues! I, the little provincial teacher, was joining the exclusive club of the canceled! Among them: a philosopher, Sylviane Agacinski, prevented by a horde of students from giving a lecture in Bordeaux because she had expressed an opinion on surrogacy that they didn’t like; a sociologist, Nathalie Heinich, booed in Poitiers because she criticized inclusive writing; an anthropologist, Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, whose lecture was postponed indefinitely by a startled dean; a linguist, François Rastier, who was unable to give a lecture at the ENS in Lyon because of a student union with questionable syntax; and of course a famous writer, J. K. Rowling, who is subject to a general speech ban because she thinks that a woman is a woman and not a “body with a vagina,” as The Lancet elegantly puts it. Anne-Sophie Chazaud listed many others five years ago, and this list continues to grow. In the middle of August, some people did not agree with this unfortunate Barbie. “To the hole!” shouted the bearded men. “Hide this film that I cannot see,” shouted some Salafists, who have the sad habit of seeing cowards obey them.
Anch’io sono cancellato! What a shock when I received the cancellation message! The same shock as the teenager experiencing his first orgasm, of the student who received first place in the philosophy agrégation, of the researcher who finally passed a Western that he will not need to fraudoshop, of the president elected with 80 percent of the vote and who is delighted to have nothing more to do for five years, of Claudel discovering God who had hidden behind the third pillar of Notre-Dame—to the right of the entrance. What to do with all this happiness? Announce it to everyone, of course—happiness is something to be shared, and I did it immediately. Then I asked myself: “What did these blessed people do when they were thus overwhelmed by this sublime joy?” The adolescent, of course, started again immediately—when you are young, you have triumphant mornings; the young graduate struggled to avoid being assigned to the Annie-Ernaux High School in Chaumont-sur-Seudre; the researcher photographed his impeccable Western; the president did nothing for five years; Claudel made his theater.
[RELATED: Forty-Four Years in French Academia—And Why It’s All Gone Wrong]
Guilt or Victimize? What if we spoke to adults?
I was invited in May by a club of young psycho-socio-oncologists, who were very friendly, to give a presentation as part of a colloquium, “Misinformation and Cancer.” Precisely, I have worked on the subject with regard to charlatanism, and I am now interested in the avalanche of fake news on the etiology and epidemiology of cancers that have flooded the media since the beginning of 2025. Honored by the invitation, I proposed a title and an abstract; I prepared and submitted the draft of the PowerPoint that would carry my ideas; I had the conference announcement inserted in issue four of the professional journal I edit, Innovations et Thérapeutiques en Oncologie—I even corrected the spelling mistakes!; I offered the pages of that journal for publishing the proceedings of the conference—in short, I fully supported the initiative. Only then did our young friends realize that I do not belong to the Camp of the Good! I am an incorrigible scientist who dissects articles, who has some skills in statistics, and who does not hesitate to row against the tide of public opinion; I had dared to co-sign an article in a weekly newspaper pointing out scientific errors recycled in the mainstream media. That proved fatal for me.
My intention was to provide reassuring information to both the general public and to patients, after the media hype that monopolized fears during the first half of the year. Spreading messages of fear is not constructive when those fears are amplified beyond all measure and are therefore unjustified. The confidence that caregivers must inspire in their patients should allow them to approach disease without guilt on the one hand and without victimhood on the other. The atmosphere of fear maintained by irresponsible media—unfortunately followed by certain organizations from which one might have expected better—does not allow patients to go through the painful ordeal they are experiencing with any serenity. Explaining, reassuring, and protecting generally seems, to oncologists who are in direct contact with patients, more constructive than worrying, frightening, or arousing rancor and resentment—especially when a patient’s vital prognosis is at stake.
Do not think I am alone: Jérôme Barrière, much more active and vigilant than I, whom I had associated with my presentation; other oncologists, epidemiologists, and journalists of real value, who go to the heart of things in weeklies like Le Point or L’Express and sometimes in dailies like Le Figaro, ask the same questions I ask and reach the same conclusions, since they have access to the same scientific articles and know how to read and analyze them. But what can you do when faced with two million sheep who are convinced that “thousands of children will die of cancer” because of acetamiprid? The culprits are not the majority of the signatories—apart from the Parisian bobos who cannot distinguish a cow’s head from its hindquarters; no, the culprits are supposedly educated people, including some MPs, who spread these lies to ingratiate themselves with animal-rights activists and pursue only political objectives. One female MP, an academic to boot, even told us about her digestive problems and her difficulty expelling intestinal gas to manifest her contempt for farmers. It is science she also despises, as when she says she prefers witches to engineers, or when she places Darwin before
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